Wednesday, July 6, 2016

James Comey Just Gave Donald Trump a Huge Political Gift

Fortune ^ | 7/5/2016 | Dan Friedman 

FBI Director James Comey’s announcement Tuesday that the agency will not recommend charges against Hillary Clinton was blatantly political, just not the way critics claim.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump tweeted that Comey’s decision not to seek charges against Clinton over her use of a personal server while she was Secretary of State shows a “#RiggedSystem.” Other Republicans chimed in to suggest Comey corruptly sought to appease his potential future boss.
But it was to avoid such criticism that Comey wandered into political positioning. Anticipating attacks and probably worried about the appearance of Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s ill-advised meeting with former President Bill Clinton, Comey tried to telegraph evenhandedness. He balanced his announcement with information about the job he was given, recommending whether to charge Clinton, with views that were not his job to share.
Comey, a Republican picked by President Obama for a 10-year term, did not have to hold a news conference to say the FBI was not seeking charges against Clinton. He said doing so was “unusual.” It was more like unprecedented.
Comey opened the surprise press conference by noting that neither the Justice Department, to which his recommendation went, nor the the rest of the Obama administration knew what he would say. The director built drama by waiting until the end of his statement to announce the FBI’s recommendation. Before he got there, he took care to trash Clinton’s handling of classified information with the immediately famous words: “extremely careless.”(snip)
Those characterizations are notable because, as he said in the same statement, Comey was not tasked with opining on Clinton’s conduct. He was in charge of the investigation into whether a crime occurred.
(Excerpt) Read more at fortune.com ...

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